More Detail on Tom Rodrigue’s Mother - September 10th, 2005
"..Valued lies.com reader trg34211 supplied a link to the following transcript from CNN’s Newsnight program. It features an interview with Tom Rodrigue, whose mother’s death by drowning after days of frantic phonecalls was tearfully described by Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard on Meet the Press last week: Newsnight with Aaron Brown.
It seems increasingly likely that Rodrigue’s mother died in the initial flooding on Monday, August 29, and that Broussard’s story about frantic phonecalls on the subsequent Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday was a lie..."
"Anyway, here’s the transcript:
CANDIOTTI: Tom Rodrigue, himself a former emergency management director for Louisiana’s National Guard, was out of town when Katrina turned toward New Orleans. He started calling the nursing home Saturday, urging that it be evacuated.
RODRIGUE: You know, they indicated they were not going to leave.
CANDIOTTI: Sunday night, as Katrina struck, Rodrigue was 30 miles away directing emergency personnel for Jefferson Parish. He called the nursing home in St. Bernard Parish again, pleading with officials to get the residents out. He was told they were going to try.
RODRIGUE: I called the St. Bernard officials again and, you know, told them that, you know, they’ve got to get, you know, these people out. And they said they notified them, and that they weren’t — they refused to leave. And I said, “Well, you need to send the sheriff’s office down there and make them leave.” And he said, “I’m doing everything I can.”
CANDIOTTI: On Wednesday, 10 days after Katrina struck, authorities began removing bodies from St. Rita’s Nursing Home. Eva Rodrigue’s remains have not yet been found....."
Rodrigue did make multiple calls to the nursing home to check on evacuation progress and to the local authorities to try to get the home evacuated prior to the storm.
Rodrigue is on record as saying he heard nothing about his mother and the nursing home until four days after Katrina, when his son found the names of those evacuated from St. Rita's listed on the Internet.
At the link above, he also describes in more detail his conversations with St. Rita's staff and local authorities. (registration is required, you can bybass at bugmenot.com)
All those who perished by drowning at St. Rita's died on the 29th in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, when waters rose precipitously in a very short period of time - and hour to a half-hour. Frantic evacuation efforts began when the water started to rise, but they were unable to get everyone out in time. A harrowing account of this evacuation was published by USA Today.
